"Yes," she whispered. "Oh, yes, just like that?

"Draw up your knees, my sweet," he whispered. She obeyed. The exciting sensations intensified.

"Ah, Caroline," he said against her mouth. "I am well and truly lost."

Before she could ask him what he meant by the strange words, he began to move more quickly.

The delicious friction tightened her insides until she could no longer tolerate the intense sensation. She convulsed.

The release sent her flying into the night.

Adam gave a muffled groan and went rigid.

At the last possible instant, he pulled free of her body and collapsed beside her, spending himself into the bedding.

SEVENTEEN

A long time later Adam folded one arm behind his head and pulled Caroline close beneath the old blanket. She snuggled and seemed to settle against him, as if preparing to go to sleep. A pleasant prospect, he thought, but not possible tonight.

"When did you plan to tell me?" he asked.

He knew he sounded brusque and unromantic; so be it. He was trying to balance a chaotic mix of emotions that had shaken him to the core.

In hindsight he knew that he had not wanted to heed the small clues that had pointed to Caroline's lack of experience. He had been only too pleased to believe that she was a widow. When that convenient fiction had evaporated earlier this evening, he had comforted himself with some equally handy assumptions concerning a shady past and a scandalous affair.

But Caroline was one surprise after another.

She yawned delicately and stretched out one leg like a small cat beneath the blanket. "Tell you what?"

He felt her toes brush against his calf. The small caress had a stirring effect.

"'That you were a virgin," he said.

Caroline went still. Then she levered herself up on one elbow and looked down at him with a puzzled frown. "Was I supposed to inform you?" she asked.

"Yes," he said unequivocally. He was as annoyed with her as he was at himself. "You were supposed to tell me. I have a rule against bedding innocents."

"Ah, so that is the problem." Her face cleared instantly. "You had a rule."

"You mock me at your peril, Caroline," he warned gently.

"Let us examine this situation logically. By innocents, I assume you refer to very young ladies with no experience of the world and who are expected to guard their reputations until marriage. Am I correct?"

"Close enough," he allowed carefully. Her glib response made him cautious. She was going to try to manipulate him. He knew it as surely as he knew his own past.

She gave him a brilliant, smug smile. "Then you have nothing to be concerned about. I do not fit into the category of innocent and therefore you have not broken your rule."

He caught a tumbled lock of her hair, curled it around his fingers and tugged gently. "No?"

"No, indeed. Only consider the facts." She held up her hand and ticked off her arguments, one by one. "First, I am no longer a young lady. I am twenty-seven years old, well past the age that the world considers either innocent or marriageable."

"Caroline—"

"Second, in the highly unlikely event that I did meet a man who could be considered potential husband material, I would feel obligated to tell him about the dreadful scandal three years ago, and that would be the end of the matter. No proper, well-bred gentleman would want to wed a woman whose reputation had been destroyed as thoroughly as mine was, even if she took an assumed name. Therefore, I see absolutely no reason whatsoever why I should have saved myself for a wedding night that will never occur."

"Your logic has a major flaw," he began.

"And last but not least," she said, interrupting him, "al-though I was, technically speaking, a virgin until quite recently, I am not lacking in experience of the ways of the world. I knew very well what I was about when I returned your kisses tonight, Adam. You did not take advantage of me. If anything, it was the other way around"

"The other way around?" Stunned by that assessment of events, he yanked his arms out from behind his head and sat up. "Are you trying to convince me that you deliberately set out to seduce me?"

She pursed her lips. "Well—"

"Because I do not believe it. Not for a moment"

"I am only saying that from the first moment we met, I was attracted to you." She waved one hand negligently. "Granted, there were some initial problems because I feared you might be a threat. But once I concluded that I could trust you, I admit I did hope that you might return my feelings."

"I see"

"I will allow that matters proceeded at a much brisker pace than I had anticipated," she continued blithely. "I certainly never expected that we would find ourselves in a passionate embrace after such a short acquaintance."

"Nor did I" He threaded his fingers through her hair and pulled her face closer to his. "Tell me, Caroline, if you were so eager to taste of physical desire, why did you wait this long? Surely there have been other opportunities."

She shook her head, smiling as though she found his question amusingly naive. "There are any number of risks involved for a woman. I did not want to take them with the wrong man."

A thrill of gut-deep satisfaction momentarily distracted him. "You thought that I was the right man?"

The laughter vanished from her eyes, leaving certainty. "There was no doubt in my mind at all tonight"

He brushed his mouth slowly, deliberately across hers. "And did you find the experience as interesting and exciting as you had expected?"

"Absolutely. Quite satisfying, indeed."

"You leave me speechless, to say nothing of what you are doing to my nerves"

"Get hold of yourself, sir," she said bracingly. "If you fear that your nerves may fail, fortify them by reminding yourself of my great asset and most excellent shield, the sturdy bulwark that will protect me from the worst effects of scandal and ruin"

"And what is this asset, shield and bulwark?"

"Why none other than my late husband, Jeremy Fordyce, who so conveniently made me a widow."

He pulled her back down onto the bed. "I will concede that the man's spirit does have his uses."

EIGHTEEN

Irene Toller sat alone in the séance room, a large glass of gin on the table in front of her, and contemplated her vengeance. She had been a gullible fool, she thought, but no longer. The scales had fallen from her eyes at last.

"Here's to you, Elizabeth Delmont, wherever you are." Irene hoisted the glass of gin in a mocking toast and took a long swallow. The potent spirits burned all the way down.

She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. "Conniving harlot that you were, you did me a tremendous favor by showing me the truth. Do you know, if I actually did possess the ability to summon phantoms, I would call yours up from hell just so that I could thank you properly."

She drank more gin, vaguely aware that the house was growing cold around her. The fire had begun to die after Bess had left.

"Unfortunately, I won't be able to tell you how much I appreciate what you did for me, Mrs. Delmont, because when it comes to séance work, I am just as much of a fraud as you were," she muttered to the empty room. "But then all of us in this line are charlatans and tricksters, are we not? It is the great secret that unites those of us in the profession."

She lapsed into a moody contemplation of the past. She had begun her career nearly a decade ago. She had been young and pretty, both extremely useful attributes in a female medium, but the competition had been fierce nonetheless. In order to make a living she had been obliged to resort to the tried-and-true tactic of holding private séances for gentlemen who desired to meet the spirits of long-dead courtesans and temptresses.

Night after night, in darkened rooms, she had pretended to be possessed by the phantoms of women whose carnal natures had made them legends. For a price she had al-lowed her male clients to use her body to satisfy their fantasies of passionate encounters with the lusty queens and famous mistresses of antiquity.

It was not an uncommon practice among those who eked out a living at the lower end of the profession. And there was no denying that it had the great advantage of al-lowing the medium to maintain an aura of innocence. After all, she was not the one having sex with the client; she was merely the conduit the spirit employed for the purpose.

She had disliked the nature of the work involved, but it was not as if she'd had a great deal of choice, she reminded herself.

Eventually she had added the planchette, some rappings and the odd manifestation to her repertoire. Those techniques had brought her a different, less demanding clientele. Then a few months ago he had come into her life and

she had found herself back in the old role. In the beginning she had assured herself that their relationship was purely a business matter as far as she was concerned. But she had made a devastating mistake. She had fallen in love.

How could she have been so foolish? It was as if she had been entranced, she thought. But the spell had been broken at last by the spilling of blood, the oldest magic of all. Not that she believed in that sort of superstitious nonsense, she reminded herself, shuddering.

But she did believe in revenge, and soon hers would be fulfilled.

Somewhere in the house a floorboard creaked. The eerie groan echoed loudly in the stillness, startling her. She took a deep breath and told herself to be calm. The sound was nothing more than the familiar squeak of wood on wood that one often heard when one was alone at night.